IF YOU ARE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

In a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right, the Department of Health and Human Services Monday released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception. In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion. Doing so protects extremists under the Weldon and Church amendments. Those laws prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for abortion services.

The Religious-Right-run US Department of Health and Human Services is redefining contraception as abortion, in order to make it harder -- or impossible -- for women to avoid pregnancy. They're doing this by claiming -- without any evidence -- that hormonal contraception acts to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb, and they're defining "prevention of implantation" as abortion because they're defining "the beginning of human life" as fertilization.

You might think Bush has done all the damage he possibly can to reproductive rights. But he's not done yet:

The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control.

Under the draft of a proposed rule, hospitals, clinics, researchers and medical schools would have to sign "written certifications" as a prerequisite to getting money under any program run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The rule defines "abortion" so broadly that it could also apply to birth control pills and emergency contraception. And because the rule would apply to federal health programs, low-income and uninsured women will be most affected....

Read her full post here, she has lots more to say on the subject and has more links.

What the fuck has happened to this country that we've allowed this kind of regressive bullshit - are we more collectively stupid than I thought?